It is interesting, but doesn't say everything. The difference from a gaming perspective between my old GMA MacBook and my newer 9400M MacBook is enormous. Two very different machines.

From a developer's perspective, the 9400 is a good base GPU. It is over a year since it replaced the GMAs, and it takes away a lot of low-end problems (esp with shaders). I still support GMA myself in my libraries, but I know from way back that backwards compatibility does not pay much. I did all that work in the 90's to make my code work all the way down to the first generation of Macs, and all it really gave me was that my games are nice to emulators.

In the end, what matters is what video card the users of your game have. But you won't know that until you release, and what hardware you support well will affect the statistics, so you're in a kind of chicken/egg problem.

The third-party stats at least give you SOME perspective. Example: you REALLY need to support the 9400M (not that that's hard for most people). The X1600 is still pretty significant. For a predominantly casual audience, Intel GPUs may be about 20% of your market, about 10% each to 950/X3100, etc.

(Nov 8, 2010 09:00 AM)OneSadCookie Wrote: In the end, what matters is what video card the users of your game have. But you won't know that until you release, and what hardware you support well will affect the statistics, so you're in a kind of chicken/egg problem.

The third-party stats at least give you SOME perspective. Example: you REALLY need to support the 9400M (not that that's hard for most people). The X1600 is still pretty significant. For a predominantly casual audience, Intel GPUs may be about 20% of your market, about 10% each to 950/X3100, etc.

Correct, but the easy starting point is the claim that most software is bought for new computers, which would make the GMAs easy to ignore. However, those 20% (or whatever it is) may be worth including anyway, and I have a feeling that CPUs don't age as fast as they used to, so the old rules must be re-evaluated once in a while.

(Nov 8, 2010 10:35 AM)Ingemar Wrote: Correct, but the easy starting point is the claim that most software is bought for new computers, which would make the GMAs easy to ignore.

I think you're generally right about letting go of backward compatibility as much as possible, except like you also said, CPUs don't age like they used to. I myself am still using a MacBook with a GMA in it as my primary machine. Even though I can afford a new machine, and have thought about it, this computer quite simply does everything I need it to do, so I haven't been able to justify a new Mac -- yet. Unfortunately, one of the things I *don't* need it for is gaming. I have several friends and family who still use their MacBooks as primary machines too. One thing about all of us is that we all do in fact still regularly buy new software for them, even though we're using 3 and 4 year-old computers. In terms of games, specifically for my MacBook, most recently I purchased the Humble Indie Bundle.

My view is that we're only supporting >= Mac OS X 10.6. If you haven't updated to 10.6 by now, then I'd say you're not one to purchase new software. This also implies that we've dropped PPC support. BUT, since we're supporting 10.6, the current low-end of hardware unfortunately includes GMA. The darn thing just isn't gone yet

PopCap/Big Fish still want support for PPC and 10.4, according to some people I've been in touch with. Personally I don't want to support older than 10.5 for casual games, and anything older than 10.6 with some form of non-GMA GPU isn't fun if you're making a fancy 3D game

(Nov 8, 2010 05:03 PM)gnurf Wrote: PopCap/Big Fish still want support for PPC and 10.4, according to some people I've been in touch with. Personally I don't want to support older than 10.5 for casual games, and anything older than 10.6 with some form of non-GMA GPU isn't fun if you're making a fancy 3D game

Why don't you want to support 10.4? I understand if you want to drop the GMA950, but 10.4 is a very solid and stable OSX - less buggy than anything later. (10.6 is so buggy it is close to useless IMHO. I hear quite a few users are downgrading to 10.5!)

(Nov 11, 2010 08:07 AM)AnotherJake Wrote: Personally I don't care that 10.4 is stable, all I care about is that folks who haven't upgraded from such an old OS by now probably aren't going out and buying new software, such as mine.

Quote:(10.6 is so buggy it is close to useless IMHO. I hear quite a few users are downgrading to 10.5!)

I have never heard such a thing. Must be a foreign issue of some sort. 10.6 has worked great for me and this is the first time I've heard of anyone "downgrading".

Also note that the Mac App Store will only be on >= 10.6.

It is indeed a matter of what the customers run, but at least I care about 10.4 compatbility as long as I can't trust my 10.6 Mac. But 10.5 definitely has some life left. Stores buy second-hand copies because so many want them. I doubt that that is a national issue. In my experience, USB stability is totally flawed on 10.6. Either 10.6 fails to mount USB sticks, or it just crashes. And I am talking about more than one machine.

I really only need 10.6 for one thing: OpenCL. Otherwise I would not use it at all until the bugs are fixed.

Hmph... Apparently I am the exception and not the rule when it comes to 10.6 then. I'm glad this came up because I was under the "illusion" that 10.6 was rock-solid and virtually everyone would be using it, or *should* be using it.

My USB stick works perfectly on my MacBook with 10.6 (the stick is an HP 16GB). USB in general works perfectly for me. No hardware or video issues. It *did* kernel panic once when fast user switching on an early version of 10.6.